The Blob (1958) Saturday Monster Movies

It’s the age-old story of the outside invader. (Or at least as old as the 1950s!) When a meteorite crashes near a small town, a curious old man discovers a strange, gelatinous substance inside—and soon finds himself consumed by it. As the blob grows larger with each victim, devouring everything in its path, local teenagers Steve and Jane struggle to convince the authorities of the creeping horror threatening their town. With adults dismissing their frantic warnings, the young couple must rally their peers to fight back against the seemingly unstoppable, amorphous menace before it engulfs the entire community.

Ah how innocent the times were! Teenagers aren’t the threat that the generational divide would suggest. They are actually the only people capable of recognizing the unknown and unseen threat invading their community! The Blob echoes similar threat stories like “The Thing from Another World” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, both from earlier in the decade, and “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” that would air on The Twilight Zone just the next year. Except in this tale, the threat is not an intelligence, but a mindless mass.

Really, in all of these stories, whether the threat is intelligent of not, the real danger is shown to be masses of humanity. We can be scary, mindless beings when in a crowd responding to anything as a group. Sometimes we come together thoughtfully, intelligently and for good. Usually, though, humanity exposes itself as the fallen, broken, follow-our-fears-into-destruction fools we can be.